Talk:vapourise

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

Is vapourise a misspelling in commonwealth areas? RJFJR 17:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Pingku 17:56, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Also vapourize. Please don't use the phrase “Commonwealth spelling,” because there is no such thing. Canada has its own preferred and acceptable spellings. —Michael Z.

What would you suggest as an alternative? -- Visviva 04:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

British for terms not used in Canada, British, Canadian for terms which are.

The Commonwealth of Nations is a political organization whose membership crosses linguistic lines. Most of its members inherited their English vocabulary and spelling from Britain. The exception is Canada, whose English is closely related to the other main branch, American English, but also influenced by British English and Canadian French.

There's no need, and no economical way, to specify that aluminium is the primary spelling in the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, South Africa, and all the other countries of the Commonwealth except Canada. It's just British English. Specific regionalisms like Australian tucker should be labelled according to their native geography, of course.

I haven't seen any dictionaries which apply the strictly political labels “UK” or “Commonwealth” for varieties of English. —Michael Z. 2009-02-22 16:52 z

Ireland ... and all the other countries of the Commonwealth. Please, more cautious with this issue - the Republic of Éire has not been a member for 60 years and is a completely independent country. The Republic of South Africa has not been either from the Verwoerd's times until de klerk came to power. But Éire is definitely not going to rejoin (here all other former members which are not as influential as Éire in matters of regional varieties of English). I personally favour the designation Commonwealth, because in this case we can settle for only 4 templates: UK/British, Ireland, Commonwealth and US (and Canada, although part of the Commonwealth) instead of dozens. Bogorm 17:50, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. I routinely assume that it's a convenient synonym for “former British Empire” or “British colonies”, but of course it's not.

So should we review all occurrences of the template since Nauru became a “member in arrears?” I notice we didn't use “Commonwealth and Pakistan” during 1999–2004 and 2007–08 when that country's membership was suspended, but I guess we shouldn't worry now that it is reinstated. Fiji, Nigeria, and a few other country's memberships have changed in the last decade. Mozambique is not a British colony at all, and its official language is Portuguese.

By the way, we need way more than four templates to account for members of Category:Regional English, and there's no reason to minimize the number.

Commonwealth membership in good standing has no clearly-defined relationship to the language used in a country, any more than membership in the United Nations, Nato, Nafta, or GATT. Another reason to use geographic labels and avoid purely political ones. —Michael Z. 2009-02-22 20:04 z

[I'm copying this discussion to WT:BP#Template:Commonwealth. —Michael Z. 2009-02-22 20:56 z]